Food Prices about to sky rocket, be prepared.

reply to post by SunnyDee


The game in the rural areas are dwindling as well. Where we used to be able to sit outside in the evening and see a herd of deer we're lucky to catch a glimpse of one. The coyotes our state released to take care of the "deer population problem" are now having a population explosion and I've heard rumors they intend to release wolves to control the coyotes?? How idiotic is that?

reply to post by johngrissom


Five hundred Semi's of corn is a drop in the bucket of our countries needs. Much of the Corn crops have been shifted to biofuel and the pesticides used on that land make it inedible to people and animals. You can't take one area and use it as evidence on a whole country. I see pretty good weather here with weekly thunderstorms coming through but also see droughts in other areas of the country along with flooding in areas and heat that destroys crops. Just because it's nice here doesn't mean that the bad weather won't effect the price of what we pay in the stores. Local crops are sent into the market and in event of a national shortage the government can take crops from communities to distribute them to the nation. For the good of the people applies. So don't think that your community is safe from a food shortage even if you own a large farm and supply your local community.

reply to post by SeenMyShare


The people in the states are idiots. Insurance companies threaten to sue states if they don't take appropriate actions to reduce deer/car accidents. That's stupid. People need to slow down and pay attention when driving in areas with deer. Most accidents with deer could be avoided if people paid attention. Farmers can harvest the deer if they bother their crops. Put a bounty on coyotes again and their populations will be reduced. I dislike and don't trust coyotes. They pack up and can damage a farmers animals.

Originally posted by Flavian
reply to post by tw0330

 

Reports yesterday from whatever the US version of MAFF is ( UK Ministry of Agriculture, Farms and Fisheries) stated that if this weather continues for the rest of this week, yields will be around 8% lower nationally. If it continues until the end of next week, it would be considerably worse.

Almost makes you wish for a bit of geo engineering doesn't it?

Shift that Jet Stream!

Makes you wonder if they already did

reply to post by tw0330


Food prices have increased significantly in the last five years. These things always effect the price of food. I've been watching them for years and buy accordingly to flow through the high priced spikes without buying much at that price. I learned this a long time ago when I heard coffee was going to jump. I told the wife we should stock up and she said it won't happen. Coffee doubled in price but only came down about twenty five percent after that. My wife now listens to me about these things finally and allows me to stock up when I see something going down. It's saved us hundreds of dollars over the last fifteen years.

reply to post by rickymouse


Yeah, currently in the UK the weather has battered the broccoli crops so it is very expensive now.

my suggestion, stock up as much as you can while it's still reasonable to buy.

reply to post by tw0330


Reasonable to buy? Steak prices are going through the roof. Buying steak for a family of four will set you back about $40.00! My family has been eating chicken, chicken, chicken. We're so used to eating chicken, I swear we'll all end up growing feathers.

If chicken starts to sky rocket, most people will be looking at any animal meat as a luxury. You're luck you have someone in the family that raises live stock. I have family that grows acres of grapes, but I don't think we can live on a diet of grapes and grape leaves.

I think you're right that we will be seeing food sky rocketing before the start of fall.

reply to post by rickymouse

I take a tube sock, fill it with chicken liver and dangle it from a tree by a metal cable. Then I sit and wait
I don't need wolves to worry about!

reply to post by tw0330


This honestly wouldn't shock me at all.

Just in my area it's been pretty much constant heat and no rain. I've been trying to keep our tomatoes and squash watered best I can.
We had a bit of rain July 4 (enough to temper the embers of the fireworks going off everywhere) but not enough to really soak.

Add to that the wacky spring we had. I talked to many garden shops and when I couldn't find half of what I wanted/needed, I asked the owners. The response was pretty much the same.
The spring season put so many things into bloom way too early and then in many areas the frost came in and killed stuff off. I lost our lilacs this year
So they couldn't even sell a number of their blooming spring perennials.

Originally posted by tw0330

Unless we get rain soon, much of the crops in the midwest will be done for, causing the price to go up in most of the food we eat. The extreme heat has caused much of the livestock to suffer, and even if the majority do survive, the cost of feeding them will go up for the ranchers which in turn will make the price of meat go up.


Don't count on sea food being cheaper either, as it is down as well (especially in the gulf).


my suggestion, stock up as much as you can while it's still reasonable to buy.

at this point rain doesn't matter when it comes to this years crop, they have passed the point of pollination and are doomed for the year. food prices are going to go way up and when you add up everything corn and soybeans are in\ used for, it becomes evident we will see across the board increases.

i would be surprised if we don't see another dust-bowl in the Midwest this year.

We haven't had the nasty hot weather here in Western New York, so our animals and most of our food production is ok. However the fruit crops were hit hard by some bug, so don't expect lots of apples from us.

I'm living on a very small SS check, yet every month I put away some food, mostly I can foods as they become available at low prices. I even can hot dogs and chicken parts. (Yes you can home can meats). They don't look pretty, but are certainly wholesome, and the liquid they are in becomes a soup to which you might add vegetables.

The big thing is be a prepper. Make sure you have a years supply of potable water. We use old fruit bottles to store the water, a tiny drop of chlorine in the bottle keeps the water fresh indefinitely. We have a coal cook stove along side of our propane stove. (No natural gas in our area) In fact the propane guy refilled our bottle this morning. $109.00 from last July to today (July 11th).

Two years ago I bought 2 cases of Tuna Fish because I love canned Tuna. I'm glad I did because I don't trust any ocean fish after the nuclear mess in Japan polluting the pacific. (Have you seen the satellite images of the nuclear pollution? (it's the entire Pacific !!!)

About fish. If you have even a small yard, you can raise edible fish in some deep tanks. Tilapia fish, and a few others make excellent home grown fish for food and fertilizer (but oh the smell of fertilizer). There are quite a number of youtube videos on raising them. Along with the fish you can use their water to fertilize soil for raising all sorts of green vegetables.

Its a bit late in the season to start tomato plants, but if you already have them then you can can the tomato sauce for later seasoning. BTW if you raise tomato seedlings. Let them grow tall and spindly before planting. Then dig a really deep hole, put a little fertilizer and some egg shells in the bottom then plant the seedling as deep as possible without covering the crown. By doing this the main plant will grow quite nicely, and after several weeks the plant will send up additional plants from the deep step, giving you even more crop possibility.

Cheers

reply to post by LittleBlackEagle

If we have back to back to back droughts like the 1930s then we will have Dust Bowl II (concomitant with The Great Depression II). Funny how things go in cycles...and this time they have "weather modification" weapons to use to bring it about if their goal is to speed up "global warming" to introduce carbon tax measures (I didnt say "legislation" as we are seeing more decree by "executive fiat" these days) and "population reduction" (another topic).

Notice the "tell me who has crop left sitting in their bins?" I will assume that some years there is backup crop from the year before, but obviously not this year. Also "This disaster will change our nation ". Oh and the comment about him helping a neighbor cut hay and bale the next, I do believe that is a very quick baling. Usually the hay has to dry out several days before baling, just goes to show the situation.


www.agweb.com...

7/11 - Rice County, Minn.: We were looking good, now we are hoping for moisture and fears are that the dryness is now making a home in MN as well. Early planted corn tasseled in the extreme heat of late June early July. Corn is fired on the hills and light soil pockets. Most of our rain that came in mid-June was all at once (five plus) and went down the creeks and rivers with the topsoil. Baled hay for a neighbor today. He cut it yesterday. USDA is caught with its pants down. They either intentionally or unintentionally eroded about the yields and acreage last year and were counting on an early and abundant harvest to cover the gap. Our local FSA didn't have the Board sign off on prevented plant last year until the end of October 2011. We were the garden area of our state and had over 6000 acres alone that didn't get planted! Highly doubt this made the final stats. Tell me who has crop left sitting in their bins? What carryout? This disaster will change our nation (hopefully for the better) and affect the world. Maybe the US will finally realize what it's true National Treasure is: Agriculture.

Originally posted by Lil Drummerboy
So now think about what you will do if your power goes out for a week, a month, three months.
Your freezer runs on electricity and wont stay cold forever.. Back up plans?
I hope so

Or, what if your power doesn't go out?

Obama's war on coal hits your electric bill

What if it gets turned off because you couldn't pay the bill? Look at your last electric bill, now add a zero to it. Could you pay it consistently, how about half of that because you were being more conservative?

reply to post by Bakatono


Good post thanks for bringing it back into the foreground. This deserves some more discussion as a possible reason why the weather has shifted like this.

A lot of people are jumping on the Global Warming bandwagon. My stance is that the Earth has a natural cycle of ice ages - it is scientific fact that the Earths climate behaves like a rubber band that is continually stretched. When the rubber band is stretched too far, it will snap back (ice age) and then as the Earth warms the proverbial rubber band begins to stretch again. I do not believe Earthlings contribute a significant amount to "Global Warming" although I think that we can accelerate this natural occurrence. This is how it was explained in the book "A Global Coming Superstorm" which was fact based backed by scientific investigation.

This ties into our current discussion because it also referenced the north Atlantic current (which is tied into the Gulf Stream) and the jet streams.

So in essence, I guess the question is how much would the BP Disaster and all that oil / corexit contribute to a shift of the gulf current?

reply to post by daynight42


You sir are the one who is being quite rude, to the OP in your original post, and now to the person that called you on it.

You want evidence? You think this is fear mongering? Then take your gripes up with the ACTUAL FARMERS who are saying this stuff.

Agweb Crop Comments

Now please if you have nothing to contribute to the rest of this thread please go.

reply to post by zeeon


I think we brought the earths correction forward about three to five hundred years with our actions over the last fifty years. The part I can't figure out is why North America hasn't started to experience the rubber band effect yet. Europe will be entering a mini ice age or possibly change to the north pole shortly. It's like the north and south poles are changing positions. Canada should wind up being a paradise and the middle of the USA will be hot as hell. Northern Europe might be full of Eskimos and seals again along with Santa and his elves. Lower south America may become the South pole. Just a guess. They should have never cut out those trees in South America, they are really increasing this thing because the carbon sink and energy buffer is disappearing. Deforesting Canada is a bad thing to do, same with Russia's big forests.

Taxing people won't help. Protecting these areas even if extreme action is taken to stop people who are destroying these forests for profit is taken. A man taking a dying tree a year to cook his food is not evil. A man who takes twenty trees off his land to build a house is not evil if he replants new ones. A man cutting all the trees off his land so he can have a pretty yard to impress others is evil. We just need to start controlling our desires before we mess this place up.

Yes, man can destroy this world, there is no doubt in my mind of that. Have you seen some of the big equipment out there that contractors and the Mining industry are using? Have you sat on side of the highway and watched the cars go by? Where are all those people going, they must be driving all over the place and not combining trips. Changing peoples attitude towards this planet is crucial. Not taxing them. Science can't fix this thing, only the common people can by not listening to Overboard Capitalistic propaganda. The Common people outnumber the Elite by fifty to one. The common person's overboard desires causes the problem. We are buying much more than we need, especially in industrialized countries.

Around here people are renting crop watering systems. Wells have gone dry. Many farmers fill up tanks regularly to water their cattle. The water isn't expensive but the machines used to water corn and beans are and farmers who rely on grass to help feed horses, sheep, goats and cows will be hurting too. personnally my garden has done well, 8' sweet corn, except all the watering has lured asian beetles. I will be lucky to have any corn and I will have to spray the ground to get rid of the larvae later this month.

reply to post by tw0330


In the Southern California mountains (Los Angeles county) we were dry the 1st 6 weeks last winter, then every few weeks we started getting decent rains, to the point that we are now almost out of drought stage. Mild spring weather, but the last 10 days of summer we have had warm-to-hot weather, typical for us this time of year. I should add we are only 7 miles in here from the Pacific Ocean, which is why our temperatures might seem really on the moderate side. We are waiting to grow crops until we can get a greenhouse (thank you Fukushima) but we did stock up on a variety of grains. Many people don't know that although oatmeal has a limited shelf life, you can store whole oats for a long time without refrigeration; whole oats are the only grain that is so soft you can flatten it by hand with a rolling pin, no joke, so there's your fresh oatmeal.

I agree with those on this thread that rice is a great thing to stock up on, especially whole grain (brown) rice. You can get the best price at an independent natural foods store, which usually has a bulk dry goods section; some of those vendors give an additional 10% off when you buy by the sack. For storage, we use an old unplugged freezer; bugs cannot get in there, and it's naturally insulated (our freezer is in a coolish back room, sitting on a cement floor that always stays cool). At Erewhon Foods in Los Angeles (in the Fairfax district downtown) they just added 300 items to their bulk foods section...I will go there later this month to check it out. Also keep in mind that a sack of any kind of beans or lentils is drastically reduced in price over the ready-to-eat canned stuff; it's the processing that makes canned goods more expensive. When I open a sack of dry grain or beans or seeds or nuts, I transfer the remaining sack contents to mason-type glass food storage jars that have a screw-on or clamp-on (with rubber gasket) metal or glass top. If you are looking to buy more glass food storage jars, be careful out there, because some stores have switched over to "made in China" jars which are made to the same pattern but are more flimsy.

I like the suggestion in this thread about buying citrus trees, but we just heard today that there's a new citrus disease making the rounds, so do report in to your local government ag service if your trees are starting to be attacked by anything. Also, if you have problems with gophers attacking your ground crops, the solution for you is castor oil. Most large garden supply houses will order it for you if they do not have it in stock. It's an old-timey solution that still works: It repels the gophers...does not kill them, but they go far, far away. The castor oil seems to be effective for awhile (perhaps an entire growing season?).

I'm in Britain and have an allotment. Because of the torrential rain we've experienced for the last month and a bit - seems like forever - we are now 3 weeks behind where we should be. Potato and onion crops are suffering. My bean crops are behind but my mangetoute is coping. Even my courgette, squash and pumpkin are very slow - considering they are greedy feeders - this is surprising. And I am not even going to mention my soft fruit.

Yes food prices are going to rocket skywards. People need to be very canny with what they have and buy carefully. I had planned to can and freeze my surplus but am not now sure that I am going to have a surplus to deal with.